Companies are increasingly turning to online market research, such as online consumer surveys, in order to obtain hard data upon which to base important business decisions. To conduct an online consumer survey, a market research company will typically engage a supplier of a survey panel. Survey panels are a collection of potential survey participants (i.e., “respondents”) available to complete online surveys. In cases where surveys need very specific and restrictive respondent demographics, multiple panels may be enlisted to complete the survey.
Online surveys may include demographic questions designed to determine whether the respondent meets predefined demographic criteria (e.g., age, gender, ethnicity, and/or income), targeted questions designed to determine whether the respondent meets predefined familiarity and/or utilization criteria for a certain product or service category (e.g., respondents who use a particular product, such as a beverage, at least three times per week), and substantive questions designed to gather objective data points for statistical and other analysis. Only respondents who meet the predefined criteria for the demographic questions and the targeted questions are prompted to respond to the substantive questions of the online survey. Respondents who do not meet the predefined criteria for any demographic or targeted question are terminated from that particular online survey (i.e., do not qualify for the survey). Also, a respondent may not qualify for an online survey because the respondent enters information indicating that he/she is in a category that is full. For example, surveys may seek a predefined mixture of respondents, such as 50% male and 50% female, and a predefined total number of 200 respondents. In this example, if 100 females have already responded to the survey, the next female respondent will not qualify for the survey.
From the market research company's perspective, the survey's success is dependent upon finding qualified respondents in a timely manner so that the survey is successfully completed in the stipulated time and with a favorable cost structure. Because multiple suppliers oftentimes must be engaged to meet the demographic requirements of the survey, intermediate companies deploy applications called “routers” to automate aspects of managing the multiple suppliers.
Routers utilize software to route respondents to an inventory of surveys. The router module of the survey management system has a two-fold responsibility. First, it is responsible for routing the respondents to appropriate surveys. Second, the router must view the survey pool holistically and affirm that the surveys collectively have a high chance of completion. For the latter responsibility, the router has to employ a combination of the contradictory aspects of randomization and prioritization to disperse respondents efficiently. Intelligent dispersion of respondents is one of the core features of a router. Thus, when a respondent fails to meet demographic criteria or familiarity/use criteria for a given online survey, the router matches the respondent's information against other online surveys in the pool and prompts the respondent with more questions to determine whether the respondent meets the demographic and familiarity/use criteria for a second online survey. If the respondent qualifies, he/she is prompted to respond to the substantive questions of the second online survey. Otherwise, the router continues to prompt the respondent with more questions for different online surveys in the pool.
FIG. 1 schematically illustrates online surveys within a router's survey management system. The router platform may host a plurality of online surveys including first survey 100, second survey 200, and third survey 300 in survey pool 1. First survey 100 may include screening questions 110 and substantive survey questions 120. Second survey 200 may include screening questions 210 and substantive survey questions 220. Third survey 300 may include screening questions 310 and substantive survey questions 320. The screening questions may include demographic questions and targeted questions. For example, screening questions 210 may include demographic questions 211 and 212 and targeted question 213. The router platform will present questions to a respondent until the respondent is qualified for a particular survey. Specifically, the respondent may be prompted to respond to demographic questions 111 (“What is your age?”), 112 (“What is your zip code?”), and 113 (“How many kids do you have?”) of first survey 100. If the respondent did not qualify for first survey 100 based on his/her response to demographic question 113, then the respondent may be prompted to respond to targeted question 213 (“What brand of car did you purchase in the last 12 months?”) of second survey 200. If the respondent qualifies, he/she is prompted to respond to the substantive questions 220 of the second survey 200. If the respondent does not qualify for the second survey 200, the respondent may be prompted to respond to demographic question 313 (“What's your ethnicity?”) of third survey 300. The router will continue to direct the respondent to new screening questions until the respondent is qualified to participate in a survey hosted on the router platform.
The market research technology industry is seeing an increasing number of respondents using mobile and tablet devices to take surveys. Typically, the surveys that respondents take are built on websites and applications that use technologies like “flash” to display questions, answer options, and various animations to survey takers. These technologies are primarily aimed towards desktop and laptop users. Flash and other technologies are not well displayed on mobile and tablet devices, which result in negative and extremely low “conversion rates” (the ratio between the number of respondents who complete a survey, and the number of respondents who attempt to take a survey) amongst survey takers from a mobile or a tablet device. Another common scenario that currently challenges the survey taking experience is the inability to create optimized custom style sheets (CSSes) that support both desktop and mobile applications. These scenarios cause two primary challenges: 1) mobile respondents cannot take these surveys which leads to lower response rates (from the respondents) and slower completion time (for the surveys); or 2) mobile respondents ability to continue taking other surveys (which they may be eligible for) is terminated because the application on their device stops responding. Accordingly, there is a need for a survey platform and process capable of improving the user experience of respondents who take surveys using a mobile or a tablet device.